Jailed Chinese Dissident Liu Xiaobo to Seek Retrial

Jailed Chinese dissident and Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo plans to submit a petition requesting a retrial over his conviction on state subversion charges, according to his lawyer, in a move partly intended to test recent talk from Beijing about reforming the country’s legal system.

A man walked in front of a poster of Chinese dissident and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo in Oslo in 2010.

Mr. Liu agreed to seek a retrial during a visit with his wife, Liu Xia, in late October, said the lawyer, Mo Shaoping. Mr. Mo and another lawyer were informed of the dissident’s decision by a relative late last week, he said.

A former literature professor who played a prominent role in the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy protests, Mr. Liu was sentenced to 11 years in prison for subversion in 2009 following his detention as lead author of Charter 08, a manifesto that called for freedom of speech and multi-party elections. He lost an appeal in early 2010.

According to Mr. Mo, the Liu family had previously held back from requesting a retrial because Liu Xia’s brother was facing charges of fraud related to a property dispute, and they didn’t want to anger authorities while his case was pending.

The brother, Liu He, was sentenced to 11 years in prison in June in a decision relatives said was politically motivated. The sentence was upheld following an appeal in August.

Mr. Liu’s decision to seek a retrial was also motivated in part by talk of legal reform that earned mention last week in a major reform blueprint issued following a meeting of top Communist Party leaders. In the document (in Chinese), the country’s new leadership said China would “guarantee that judicial and prosecutorial powers are exercised according to the law, independently and fairly” by improving management of the judicial system at the provincial and lower levels.

“They said they would guarantee independent and fair use of judicial power,” Mr. Mo said. “We want to test if they are really capable of issuing independent judgments.”

Legal experts have said the reform proposals put forward so far are vague and highly unlikely to eliminate political interference in high-profile cases. Mr. Liu has also exhausted his right to appeal, making it virtually impossible for his sentence to be overturned.

Mr. Liu is currently serving his sentence at Jinzhou Prison in northeastern China’s Liaoning province. His lawyers have submitted a request to see their client at the prison, according to Mr. Mo, but were told that a decision would have to come from higher authorities.

Officials at the prison couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

Mr. Liu became China’s first Nobel laureate when he was awarded the Peace Prize in 2010, a decision that focused a global spotlight on China’s human-rights record and enraged Beijing.